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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
From an original storyline by Ralph Smart, Bitter Springs is a pioneering drama that centres on the conflict between white settlers and Aboriginal people over rights of access to water. In the early 1900s, the King family treks some 600 miles to take up the property they bought from the government. When they arrive, they clash with the local Aboriginal tribe. The waterhole on which the local people depend for survival is now part of the Kings' property. When one of the Kings is speared, the family decide to compromise rather than fight, and a deal is struck whereby both parties agree to establish a profitable sheep station around the waterhole.
The story is notably liberal in balancing the point-of-view of encroaching European settlers with Aboriginal claims for land rights, coincidentally contemporaneous with the emergence of the liberal, pro-Native American Hollywood Western with Broken Arrow (1950).
Adaptations
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y
Bitter Springs : A Novel from the Film Script
Bitter Springs : The Story of the Film
London
:
Convoy Publications
,
1950
Z1182122
1950
single work
novel
A family of white farmers fight to take possession of land and water that is home to a well-established Aboriginal clan.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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“You Lucky People!” Tommy Trinder on Stage and Film as a Public Vector of Post-war Anglo-Australian Projects of Land, Food and People
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020; 'Thomas Edward Trinder (1909–1989), a foremost British variety entertainer of his age, is a major twentieth-century cross-over multi-mediated entertainer. His seven-decade career stretches from music hall and concert party origins to embrace variety, radio, films and television. He also toured Canada, the United States and South Africa. A master at the art of brash self-promotion (Farmer), his lantern-jawed visage and voluble improvisatory skill were encountered in Government Houses and hospital wards, pantomime stages and on the Nullabor Road, which he crossed in his ‘TT1’ registered Rolls (‘Worth Reporting’). Trinder made three Australian visits: October 1946 to February 1947; April to August 1949 (this was mostly occupied with filming Ealing Studio’s Bitter Springs); and the last—June 1952 to June 1954—encompassed the also-strenuous royal visit. Trinder is deserving of historical attention in his own right as an important public presence within the rich cross-influences of post-war Australian popular culture, and is a useful vector for exploring the complex intertwined public networks of transnationalism. The Trinder vector thus takes us across post-war immigration from outside the nation and the internal migration of an involuntarily displaced people within it; and encompasses both the two-way circulation of peoples and largely one-way transfers of technology, money and, in particular, food.' (Introduction) -
Collaborations and Renegotiations : Re-examining the ‘Sacred’ in the Film-Making of David Gulpilil and Rolf de Heer
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Literature and Theology , June vol. 31 no. 2 2017; (p. 187–199)'This article discusses the term ‘sacred’ in relation to the work of nineteenth-century sociologist Émile Durkheim, for whom the word denoted the objects, practices and assumptions that sustained communal solidarity and fostered dynamic energies, whether or not they were conventionally described as ‘religious’. I then turn to the work of more recent scholars of ‘critical religion’ suggesting that the terms ‘religion’ and ‘the sacred’ derive from a predominantly western, patriarchal and colonial context, forming part of a complex network of interconnected categories that represent a distinctive and dominant discourse of power constructing a privileged identity through hostile Othering or exclusions. Arguably, in the Australian mainstream, a discourse of ‘religion’ imported largely by Christian settlers from the west over the last two hundred years has been employed to exclude Aboriginal ways of understanding the world, for example by promoting the category of ‘land’ as an exploitable, God-given human possession. Nevertheless, drawing on the work of Julia Kristeva, I understand that an encounter with the Other—whether the Aboriginal or the balanda—can be viewed differently: as a zone of properly disturbing but also creative possibility. It remains very important, however, to acknowledge the power imbalances that are still embedded within such encounters, and the consequent risks to indigenous Australians, of further dislocation and dispossession. This idea is explored through a consideration of the collaborative film-making of David Gulpilil and Rolf de Heer and, in particular, of two films: Ten Canoes (2006) and Charlie’s Country (2013).' (Publication abstract)
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South of Ealing : Recasting a British Studio’s Antipodean Escapade
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Australasian Cinema , vol. 10 no. 2 2016; (p. 223-236) 'The five films made in Australia by Ealing Studios in the 1940s and 1950s have largely been analysed and ‘reclaimed’ (by figures like Bruce Molloy) as key works of Australian National Cinema, movies that occupy and populate a period of meagre feature film production while reworking popular genres such as the Western and the crime film. Although these films can be read symptomatically in terms of their ‘localised’ renderings of landscape, character and narrative situation, they have seldom been discussed in relation to the broader patterns of Ealing film production, the studio’s preoccupation with interiorised communities, work, Britishness and small-scale settlements on the geographic fringes of Britain and the Empire (such as Whisky Galore!), and the various other films (such as the Kenya shot and set Where No Vultures Fly and West of Zanzibar) that light upon far-flung or peripheral locations and settlements. This essay re-examines the Ealing ‘adventure’ through a transnational lens that focuses attention on the largely unacknowledged parallels and production symmetries between films such as Eureka Stockade and those that sit within the ‘mainstream’ of the studio’s output (e.g. Passport to Pimlico). It also places these five films (The Overlanders, Eureka Stockade, Bitter Springs, The Shiralee and The Siege of Pinchgut) in relation to the broader commercial fate of the studio throughout the late 1940s and 1950s.' (Publication abstract) -
Straight to the Pool Room : Top 10 Films about the Australian Dream
2016
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 25 April 2016; 'The housing market may not sound like the most stimulating territory for a story, but it has been the basis of some of Australia’s greatest films' -
A Bitter Ending in Bitter Springs (Ralph Smart, 1950)
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , September no. 64 2012;
— Review of Bitter Springs 1950 single work film/TV
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Bitter Springs
2007
single work
review
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , October - December no. 45 2007;
— Review of Bitter Springs 1950 single work film/TV -
A Bitter Ending in Bitter Springs (Ralph Smart, 1950)
2012
single work
review
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , September no. 64 2012;
— Review of Bitter Springs 1950 single work film/TV - y Sheep and the Australian Cinema Carlton : Melbourne University Publishing , 2006 Z1280812 2006 single work criticism 'The book focuses on two key 'sheep films' The Squatters Daughter (1933) and Bitter Springs (1950). Both movies are concerned with the national project, in which sheep growing and nation building are seamlessly aligned.' Source: Back cover of Sheep and the Australian Cinema (2006).
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Indigenous or Exotic? Trees in Australian Cinema
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Etropic : Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics , no. 10 2011; (p. 141-152) 'This article examines trees in three Australian films to assess if they are seen from a white point of view or an Indigenous point of view.' (Author's abstract) -
Straight to the Pool Room : Top 10 Films about the Australian Dream
2016
single work
column
— Appears in: The Guardian Australia , 25 April 2016; 'The housing market may not sound like the most stimulating territory for a story, but it has been the basis of some of Australia’s greatest films' -
South of Ealing : Recasting a British Studio’s Antipodean Escapade
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Australasian Cinema , vol. 10 no. 2 2016; (p. 223-236) 'The five films made in Australia by Ealing Studios in the 1940s and 1950s have largely been analysed and ‘reclaimed’ (by figures like Bruce Molloy) as key works of Australian National Cinema, movies that occupy and populate a period of meagre feature film production while reworking popular genres such as the Western and the crime film. Although these films can be read symptomatically in terms of their ‘localised’ renderings of landscape, character and narrative situation, they have seldom been discussed in relation to the broader patterns of Ealing film production, the studio’s preoccupation with interiorised communities, work, Britishness and small-scale settlements on the geographic fringes of Britain and the Empire (such as Whisky Galore!), and the various other films (such as the Kenya shot and set Where No Vultures Fly and West of Zanzibar) that light upon far-flung or peripheral locations and settlements. This essay re-examines the Ealing ‘adventure’ through a transnational lens that focuses attention on the largely unacknowledged parallels and production symmetries between films such as Eureka Stockade and those that sit within the ‘mainstream’ of the studio’s output (e.g. Passport to Pimlico). It also places these five films (The Overlanders, Eureka Stockade, Bitter Springs, The Shiralee and The Siege of Pinchgut) in relation to the broader commercial fate of the studio throughout the late 1940s and 1950s.' (Publication abstract) -
The Australian Western, or A Settler Colonial Cinema par excellence
2007
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Cinema Journal , Summer vol. 46 no. 4 2007; (p. 68-95)'This essay considers the production history and reception of three of Ealing Studios' Australian films—The Overlanders, Eureka Stockade, and Bitter Springs—to better understand the films' imperial and colonial underpinnings and to position these "Australian westerns" as examples of a settler colonial mode of cinema.'
Source: Abstract.
- Northern Territory,